I asked about this on another thread, which went uncommented on, perhaps because I must have impertinently muscled in on other topic. I apologise for my bad manners, but am still interested if anyone has looked at the Greek course offered on the Mango language platform
https://mangolanguages.com/
As well as Ancient Greek, they offer Koine. I have only sampled The AG and have found the interactive software both interesting and useful. And it is free.
Has anyone else tried it?
Michael
The lessons on mango will definitely get you started.
It’s strange how it just teaches you how to understand selected passages of text instead of how to actually speak the language like the other languages on the platform.
It would be like learning Russian and only studying the ingredients on the back of a shampoo bottle. Or how to read an IKEA manual.
Nevertheless it’ll definitely get you started. And to be fair it teaches about the same as most university courses do… How to memorize a text and hope that that will be applicable to other texts… Memorize enough texts your might become reasonably capable of “decifering other ancient Greek texts”.
I mean it does teach some grammar though… So not to be too mean. Like I said…a good starting point
Your post, Mahasacham, accurately sums up the Mango Greek course, which seems to be heavy on memorization with little explanation of the underlying grammar. I have found it useful as an exercise to complement my more systematic studies with a textbook and Smyth’s grammar. Had it not been free, I would not have been prepared to pay for it, which puts one in a bit of bind., How can one know what it’s like before signing up?
Michael
I use Mango extensively for other languages, as I have a free subscription through my library account, but not much for classical languages. The problem with their Greek and Latin courses, much like some of their courses for less commonly studied languages, is that they offer very little content. Their more developed courses, like Italian, Spanish, German, Portuguese, and a few others actually cover significant amounts of grammar, but they move slowly over the course of hundreds of lessons. Latin and Greek do not yet have enough lessons to sufficiently cover inflected grammar at the typical Mango pace. Overall though, combined with Bluebird, Mango is my favorite language app. Besides, it’s one of the few programs that actually let’s you hear spoken Ancient and Koine Greek, so it’s a very helpful supplement to a text-based program. Hopefully they’ll add more content to their less-developed courses.